


Ansible

by blackrabbit42



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: End of the World, IN SPACE!, M/M, Outer Space, Science Fiction, Sex in Space, Space Stations, Terraforming, Zero-gravity sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:15:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29592660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrabbit42/pseuds/blackrabbit42
Summary: Summary: Jared's worked hard to build a second chance for humanity, but when Jensen Ackles comes into his life, he has to start asking himself, what do you risk when the stakes are so high? What do you sacrifice when there’s so little hope?
Relationships: Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Comments: 16
Kudos: 54





	Ansible

**Author's Note:**

> For spn_reversebang 2013. I've admired fanlay's work for so long, this year I swore I was going to claim her for reversebang no matter what she put out there for a prompt, and I am so, so, lucky that I won the claim. Right from the beginning, it seemed like we had a real shared vision, and her art couldn't have been more perfectly matched to what I had in my head than if she was in there with a flashlight and a camera. Special thanks to nynxlynx for the beta-read and cassiopeia7 for the science review.
> 
> An ansible is a fictional device that enables instantaneous communication across great distances in space. As this requires superluminal transmission rates, they are largely considered to be impossible. Gliese 667 is a star system consisting of three stars, one of which (Gliese 667-C) hosts a planet that is speculated to be a candidate for supporting life. Cassiopeia7 alerted me to several inaccuracies in this fic, but for the purposes of the story, I left them in. Namely- there currently is not a feasible method for generating artificial gravity on space stations, and that Europa receives very little sunlight, and could not support life as I have portrayed it in this story.
> 
> Link to ART. Seriously, it's so beautiful, please go and gush over it. https://fanlay.livejournal.com/17283.html

_Blue, blue windows behind the stars,  
Yellow moon on the rise,  
Big birds flying across the sky,  
Throwing shadows on our eyes.  
Leave us  
  
Helpless, helpless, helpless  
Baby can you hear me now?  
The chains are locked  
and tied across the door,  
Baby, sing with me somehow._ \- Neil Young  
  
  
Human beings really do destroy everything they lay their hands on, Jared thinks as he cradles the downy-feathered bird in his hands. It flutters frantically in the cage of his fingers, no less so than the tiny heart behind the cage of its own breastbone. Jared glances down at the identification tag before pushing it gently into a gas tube. It pains him to end the life of one of the very creatures he has worked so hard to preserve, but their numbers are dwindling by the day, and with no intact cadavers found in the last week, he needs to start autopsying fast.  
  
He’s aware of his clumsy, lichen-crushing footsteps, of every lungful of oxygen he steals, every puff of carbon dioxide he exhales. At this stage in the process, the fragile ecosystem is balanced on a knife’s edge, and his presence down here on-planet could send the whole thing careening into chaos. But if Jared can’t find what’s killing the birds, it could set the terraform back decades, and the human race has very little time to waste.  
  
Europa is their last reasonable hope. Mars is on the verge of collapse; the unfortunate legacy of overeager colonization. Titan had been a failure from the start, and now that the Moon was quarantine level six, that was off the table too.  
  
Jared’s even heard some talk of paraterraforming Earth, but that would be too little too late. Earth is no longer the blue-green jewel of the solar system. It hangs drab and murky in the sky, grayish-green seas and dust-covered landmasses held together with mad-scientist stitches of clogged electrohighways and congested cities.  
  
There aren’t many people who believe what Jared believes; new life can be coaxed from these distant and frozen rocks. It’s just a matter of patience. Patient as he is, however, a setback like the one he’s seeing with the birds pains him.  
  
Four more specimens and he should have enough samples to confirm what his eyes are telling him. The clogged tear ducts and swollen necks scream virus, and that’s a mixed blessing. If they can get an ID on it an anti-viral agent could have this whole thing turned around in days. But getting a fix on the ID is a bit of a gamble at best, and Jared’s not aware of any virologists currently assigned at the space station.  
  
Specimens collected, he affixes himself back into his ascension suit and gives the retraction command, watching the surface of the planet recede as the cable pulls him back toward the substation. It’s an hour-long ride, and it gives him plenty of time to admire the view.  
  
The atmosphere is still too thin to impart the vibrant hues that earth once boasted, but it’s still beautiful nonetheless. Pale green veins of vegetation grow in fractal configurations over the warmer regions; brilliant white ice graces the poles and some of the higher elevations. The boundary between sky and space shimmers like a delicate jade eggshell over the horizon. Jared has lived here a little over seven E.Y.E.s (Earth Year Equivalents) and the sight still takes his breath away.  
  
So fragile, so vulnerable. He knows the reason for all of this, to create an environment capable of supporting human life on a mass scale, and yet, he can’t help but suppress the desire to shield it from the very beings it was created for.  
  
Including whoever he could bring in to take a look at the virus situation. Earth and Mars were too far, it would have to be someone from one of the nearby stations. Which means someone that hadn’t had their feet on terra-firma for years. Jared has had plenty of practice denying extraneous requests for surface-time, but that doesn’t make it any more fun to deal with.  
  
“Welcome home, Dr. Padalecki,” intones the substation computer when he reaches the airlock. “You have five messages from _ISS Jupiter_ , two from _ISS Mars_ , and one from Terracorp. Shall I reboot communication systems?”  
  
A childhood memory flashes through his mind. His mama coming home from a long day of work, all three of the kids crowding around her and hitting her with demands, questions, and the drama-filled minutia of their middle-school days before she even set her purse down. His mother had died of lung cancer before he graduated from college; she had never smoked a cigarette in her life.  
  
He knows what they want; Terracorp is always asking for status updates as if they thought he might someday suddenly reply, “All systems go, start sending the shuttles,” when actually Europa won’t be ready for habitation in their lifetimes, nor their children’s. _Jupiter_ would be requesting surface time for grad students (no…just, no) and _Mars_ would be wanting his advice on resurrecting some species or other that they’d pushed to the verge of extinction. Assholes.  
  
“The lab, please,” he answers. The faster he gets these birds biopsied the faster he can get the virologist here. Assuming they can send someone from _ISS Jupiter_ , he can have them out of his hair in two weeks, tops. He’d had more than his fair share of visitors on the substation lately, and a lot of them felt that sex was practically mandatory, considering he had been out here on his own for several months now. They didn’t always take his version of “Hey, don’t do me any favors,” with good grace.  
  
As he scrubs up for the dissections, he asks the computer to list the science staff on _ISS Jupiter_ , starting with the bio-specialists.  
  
“Dr. Christopher K—“  
  
“Next,” he cuts her off.  
  
“Dr. Sandra McCoy, bioethicist. Dr. Misha Collins, reproductive biology. Dr. Jensen Ackles, bio-engineer. Dr. Jeffrey Morgan, xenobotanist. That concludes the list.”  
  
Damn. “No viral specialists? Not even on the medical staff?” It was a toss-away question, his mind already turned to the job in front of him. Every milligram of tissue he removed from the specimens had to be painstakingly preserved and cataloged for later research. The feathers themselves were valuable records of the fluctuating gas cycles on the surface; the bones told the story of gravitational influences; the alimentary canal a snapshot of the bird’s habitual diet.  
  
“All forty-two of the International Space Stations have been virus-free since E.Y.E 2264. There are no medical doctors specializing in viruses in-fleet. Would you like me to check the Mars directory?”  
  
“No,” Jared replies. He’d rather deal with the Earth guys, but he’ll get to that later. He stroked the iridescent feathers of the last intact specimen, watching how they reflected the harsh overhead light, transforming it to a rainbow of color. Such beauty. Universal wherever they plant it, so easily crushed.  
  
He finishes up the vivisections and sets the lymphatic samples in the incubator, but it’s merely a formality, he’s seen enough to know what he’s dealing with. “Please power up communications and request a meeting with Commander Beaver. Wake me when we’re linked.”  
  
Jared pauses in the observation pod before heading to his bunk. Reflected light from the moon’s surface bathes the room with an aquamarine glow, and it makes Jared think of being underwater. Quiet, peaceful, lonely in a pleasant way.  
  
Later, in his bunk, he thinks of the five birds that he had captured on the surface, now just a collection of tissues in storage waiting to be studied. _They would have died anyway_ , the scientific part of his mind tells him. The part of his mind that Terracorp hired him for joins in, saying, _it’s necessary for progress_. And finally, _think how many you’ll save_ , pipes in the memory of his old bio-ethics professor.  
  
But what sticks with him as he falls asleep is the memory of frantic heartbeats against his palm.  
  
********  
  
Of the forty-two thousand individuals that live on _ISS Jupiter_ , Commander Beaver is the only one who Jared can realistically call a friend. He trusted the man’s judgment both on a personal and professional level, so if Dr. Jensen Ackles was the person he was recommending, then that’s who Jared would bring on board.  
  
“But has he worked with viruses before?” Jared asks, looking over the dossier Beaver had sent. The list of Ackles’ research projects was long and eccentric and didn’t look exactly like what Jared was expecting. _Ant Swarm Optimization_? _Artificial Immune Sequencing? Glycolytic Fluctuations in Fifth Dimension Biological Systems?_  
  
“Maybe. He’s worked on a lot of stuff. Bottom line, he can design what you need as well as a delivery system.” Beaver sounded confident, but Jared still wasn’t sold.  
  
“What about that Chad guy? Wasn’t he Chief of Veterinary Medicine on _ISS Venus_? What’s he doing for you these days? Send him over.”  
  
“Nah- Chad’s waiting on a disciplinary hearing, you don’t want him. I’m telling you, Ackles is your man.” The communication delay is nearly a full two seconds, so sometimes it’s a little hard to read people, but Jared can swear that Beaver has some personal interest in this. There’s too much feeling in his voice.  
  
“He sounds like a rock star to me, and I don’t need any egos around here. This substation is too small. What’s it to you, anyway? You trying to get rid of him?”  
  
Commander Beaver sighed. “No, the opposite actually. He’s signed on for Gliese-C, and I’d rather keep him busy here, get him interested in something worth staying for.”  
  
Jared sucked in a breath. “Gliese-C is a suicide mission, Robert. I can’t have someone with that kind of mentality—“  
  
Beaver cut him off. “It won’t be like that Jared, you’ll see. He’s good, he’s really, really good. Good enough for me to want to stick my neck out for. I wouldn’t steer you wrong on this, I swear.”  
  
“All right. Send him. And while you’re at it, if you got any spare x-clamps lying around, I could use some. And some of that VS-silicon spray.”  
  
“You got it, Jared. You won’t be sorry.”  
  
Jared looks out the observation dome. _ISS Jupiter_ is a minuscule speck of light just barely cresting over the horizon of Jupiter. Amazing to think that tiny light was full of people, full of life. It was so small, it was easy to think of some unseen hand snuffing it out, extinguishing it like a flyaway ember from a campfire.  
  
And Gliese-C? It wasn’t even visible to the naked eye. That mission was premature, the work of desperados and dreamers. Half-way to Gliese-C and communications started climbing into the realm of days, weeks, and month-long delays. Ships visible only with the Theoretical Array Telescope on the _Deep Space Station_. In other words, crossing the border between what was detectable and what existed only by extrapolation.  
  
********  
  
Jared watches the tiny speck of light in the distance approach, gradually becoming recognizable as an inter-station shuttle. He’s been busy preparing the protocols that Dr. Ackles transmitted, but he hasn’t had the time to speak to him personally.

  
He doesn’t like the direction some of the protocols suggest, and he’s scheduled some space in the timeline to discuss alternatives. Just because he needs outside help on this doesn’t mean that he has to roll over and defer to Dr. Ackles’ proposal. He’s still the primary project manager, and nothing happens on-surface without his express approval. Period.  
  
He catches his breath as the sound of an active comm link clicks on. “Requesting permission to dock,” Ackles’ voice comes through full and clear, and Jared turns to look out the port window, even knowing there will be nothing to see.  
  
Something about that voice drives all the preconceived ideas he had about Ackles right out of his mind. That voice shimmies under his skin. It’s warm. It’s fun. It’s much younger than he expected, given Ackles’ impressive dossier. Somehow, it lacks the tin-can quality transmission through space usually imparts. It’s as if Jensen ( _he means Ackles, of course he means Ackles_ ) is standing right beside him, speaking softly into his ear.  
  
“Permission granted,” he answers, shaking his head to clear the momentary lapse of logic and continues with his calculations, it would be an hour or so before Ackles got the shuttle docked and shut down, longer still before he was able to board the substation.  
  
Therefore, Jared is startled moments later when he hears the substation computer intone, “Welcome aboard, Dr. Ackles.” He races to shuffle his work surface into order and hot-foot it to the airlock. It’s pretty much the height of bad manners, never mind a semi-serious breach of security, not to have been waiting there when Ackles arrived. It doesn’t make sense that he’s onboard already; there are all sorts of post-flight procedures he should be overseeing.  
  
At the airlock, Jensen is waiting patiently, his lips twisted slightly, resisting the urge to laugh at some private joke. “Your computer sounds like Donna Reed,” he says, reaching out to shake Jared’s hand.  
  
Jensen matches his voice. His tawny hair is cut unevenly as if he’d done it himself, and his hazel eyes have creases at the corners that indicate he spends more time smiling than not.  
  
“Donna- what? Who?” Jared suddenly finds his words have forgotten how to come out of his mouth in any sort of sensible order. Jensen’s voice was one thing, but his smile? Jared feels somewhat like he did the first time he trained in zero-g. Only minus the vomiting. He tries to pull his shit together. He would rather not have to submit to another psych eval from Terracorp.  
  
“Donna Reed? _It’s a Wonderful Life_? ‘Welcome home Mr. Bailey’?” Jensen’s ( _Dr. Ackles, Dr. ACKLES_!) palm is warm, his handshake firm.  
  
“Umm, must be before my time, Dr. Ackles,” Jared manages to stutter.  
  
When _Dr. Ackles_ laughs, Jared thinks he might actually be due for a psych eval after all, because it nearly turns him inside out with needs that he thought he had long since banished to the recesses of his psyche.  
  
“It was before _everyone’s_ time, but that’s no excuse. And just between you and me, it’s not _Doctor_ Ackles. Common mistake I don’t usually bother to correct.”  
  
“Oh, sorry then, Professor Ack-“  
  
Jensen doesn’t look even a little sheepish, he just shakes his head. “Actually, I was only a guest lecturer in Zurich… if you want to be all correct and all, it’s _Mister_ Ackles, but please, call me Jensen.” Jensen’s fingers absolutely do linger a moment on Jared’s wrist before breaking the handshake, and Jared isn’t sure which makes his head spin more, the revelation Jensen just casually dropped about his credentials or the flare of heat that crept over his skin at his touch.  
  
“Okay. Jensen it is.” Jared holds out his hand again, remembering only too late that they have _already_ shaken hands, but he can’t bring himself to care because Jensen smiles at him again. “Then call me Jared,” he says. “This way.”  
  
Jensen drops a small bag into one of the sleeping pods when they arrive in the living quarters. “I’m all set,” he says, grabbing a small steel medical transport case. “Shall we get started?”  
  
Flummoxed. That’s the word for it. Jared tries to keep up, tries to process everything that just walked on board with Dr Ack— with _Jensen_ , but his mind is busy fixating on the sound of his voice and the warm shock of his touch. “Don’t— don’t you need to do you post-flights?” he asks, hoping he’s not insulting Jensen. Because really, Jensen should be getting to all that, but Jared doesn’t want to be telling him his business.  
  
Jensen waves a dismissive hand back towards the direction of the docking bay. “It’s automated, it’s fine,” he says.  
  
Well, of course it’s automated, everything is automated, but it still needs to be monitored and sequenced for contingencies. “But don’t you have to—“  
  
“What’s the point of having it automated if you need to be there? Jensen asks, his green eyes twinkling. “I’ve made a few adjustments and the onboard will let me know if anything needs attending to.”  
  
“Adjustments?” Jared repeats dumbly. “I bet ASA shit a bird.”  
  
“Umm,” Jensen rubs a hand through the close-shorn golden hair at the back of his neck. “Listen, is this really what you want to talk about? We’ve only got a couple of days. If you want me to download a few of my hacks to your shuttle, I will, but let’s take care of your birds first, right?”  
  
Oh, right. The birds. The reason Jensen is here. “Sorry,” he says. “The lab is this way.”  
  
++++++++  
  
They start out easily enough. Jensen listens carefully as Jared describes the parameters of the problem. He takes wildly annotated notes with circles and arrows and Venn diagrams and footnotes while Jared describes the food web and species introduction timelines. He’s a little strangely interested in the lichens' genome and points out not one, but three anomalies in the climate prediction models, but overall he’s attentive, acts like he actually cares about what Jared thinks of the problem.  
  
Throughout it all, he touches. Touches Jared on the shoulder. On the back of the hand. He stands too close, and his warmth bleeds right through his somewhat frayed station suit. And yet, Jared doesn’t think any of it is conscious. He doesn’t have the sense that Jensen is hitting on him or anything—maybe this is just the way he is.  
  
And it doesn’t change when Jensen outlines his proposal and they start disagreeing. Jensen reaches over Jared’s shoulder to stab a finger at a point on a datasheet, the solid mass of him pressed up against Jared’s back. Jensen’s voice doesn’t sound any less like liquid sex when it’s raised in exasperation, and Jared has a hard time reacting in an objective manner.  
  
“But look, it’s completely species-specific,” Jensen repeats, scrolling through readouts and highlighting studies faster than Jared can read their titles. It doesn’t matter if I spray it on several inches thick. Ten minutes tops and it degrades, no harm done.”  
  
“I’m not letting you crop dust two decades of growth with a virus you haven’t tested. Period. We’re not going to have another Mars on our hands, not on my watch.”  
  
“I don’t _need_ to test it. All the components are tested. The molecular glue is tested. The trials on Earth ran at 100%. _One hundred percent._ What more is it going—“  
  
“Those trials on Earth were for _different anti-virals_ , not to mention the fact that they took place on _Earth_ , and we’re talking a totally different scenario here!” Jared’s just done, and it’s not helping that Jensen seems like he’s having fun and all this yelling and dueling evidence-waving is par for the course for him.  
  
“Okay,” Jensen says, his hand on Jared’s elbow. “Tell me your worst fear. Give me the worst-case scenario.”  
  
Jared forces out a big breath. “The differential in radiation gradients between your test protocols and on-surface protocols will affect the anti-virus in ways you don’t expect, we’ll lose the birds and disrupt the chain, leading to extinctions and ripples that we can’t even predict.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Ecosystem collapse.” It’s quite an accusation. And probably a little bit overly pessimistic, but Jensen asked for the worst case, and Jared is _not_ taking any chances when the stakes are so high.  
  
Jensen remains unruffled. “And?”  
  
“And what? Then Europa is set back several decades!”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Maybe even off the table altogether if things get bad enough. If there’s a contamination if the atmosphere fails. If the water locks up again. If _anything_!”  
  
“And?” Jensen’s hand has slid down to grip Jared’s forearm lightly. It’s as if he’s holding him in place, forcing him to stay and work through his chain of logic. “If all that does happen? If Europa completely fails?”  
  
Jared stares at him again, exasperated. Is Jensen saying he doesn’t give a shit if the project goes offline? Because this is pretty much the end of the line for humanity here. “We’ll have nowhere to go,” he says softly.  
  
“And?”  
  
“Fuck you! What do you mean ‘And’? We’re talking about extinction of the human race here! We’re talking about no more second chances. This is the last—“  
  
Jensen places his palm on Jared’s chest briefly. “Okay, okay. But you’ve got to think about it this way. What are the chances that this whole thing is going to work, I mean _really_ work? That we’re going to end up with a planet stable enough to sustain habitation on a scale of years that makes all this worth it? ZERO. Next to zero, and you know it’s true.”  
  
“But that shouldn’t stop us from trying.” Jared knows Jensen’s right. Everyone knows it’s true, but no one has the balls to say it. But what’s the alternative? Roll over and wait for the end?  
  
“No, of course we shouldn’t stop trying. But it should change the way we try. This isn’t the age of caution anymore. This is the time for Hail-Mary passes.” Jensen waves off Jared’s inquisitive look at the unfamiliar phrase. “ _Everyone_ you know and love is going to die either way. One hundred percent guaranteed. If Europa works, all it’s doing is saving a place for a bunch of people that haven’t even been born yet. And say it does fail. Say we _all_ fail, and humanity is snuffed out for good. We’re an insignificant speck, not even a blip on the map of the grand scheme of things. There are somewhere near 8.8 _billion_ habitable planets in our galaxy alone, and _minimum_ 200 billion galaxies in the known universe.”  
  
Jared can’t help interrupting, “And?” he says, not without a little venom.  
  
“And that gives us a lot of freedom to make some big mistakes,” Jensen concludes. “It gives us permission to stop being cautious and start acting on faith in miracles.”  
  
“Are we still talking about my birds here, Jensen?”  
  
“We’re talking about everything.”  
  
********  
  
Jared can’t sleep, so he does what he usually does on nights like this and pads out in his bare feet to the observation dome. Europa gleams, large and iridescent in the sky, and he bathes in its tranquil light.  
  
He hasn’t given Jensen the green light on his plan yet, but he did agree to let him start building the antiviral agents. Jensen had still been working in the lab when Jared turned in for the night.  
  
The strange thing is that he’s not losing sleep over the birds or Jensen’s plan. It’s _Jensen_ that’s keeping him up. He had lain down in his pod and been unable to rid his head of Jensen’s voice or blackout the snapshots his memory kept playing of plush lips, the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose (who had freckles anymore? No one gets direct sunlight.) But more than anything, it was the touches, the heat left under Jared’s skin in the places Jensen’s fingers had brushed, that kept him awake.  
  
He’s not used to being the one who wants something he doesn’t know how to ask for. Actually, he’s not used to being someone who wants someone. It doesn’t make sense, how Jensen has flipped his switches like this because Jared was ready to throttle him several times during their debate, but all he can think about is getting up the courage to go tap on the threshold of Jensen’s quarters.  
  
“Hey, Jared.” Jensen’s voice is low and soft, but it startles Jared anyway. He hadn’t heard Jensen coming onto the deck behind him. “I couldn’t sleep either.” He steps up too close to Jared and places a hand lightly on his hip. “I think it’s because of the same reason.” Jensen tilts his head up and the ghostly light of Europa reflects in his eyes. “This okay?” Jensen asks softly, running his fingertips under the hem of Jared’s grey sleeping shirt.  
  
Jared nods, eyes closed, then opens his mouth when Jensen’s lips meet his own. He allows Jensen to part his lips with his tongue and tentatively runs his palms up Jensen’s side. Jared holds back, resists the urge to pull close and grind.  
  
“It’s okay to want things, you know,” Jensen whispers. “It’s okay to ask for them. You spend all your time caring about something else,” he gestures toward the view through the dome behind him. “Wanting to save it for everybody else. Wanting this doesn’t take away from that. Wanting this will remind you that you’re one of the ones you’re saving it for, too. That without _this_ , “ Jensen presses his hand up against Jared’s wildly beating heart, “none of us stands a chance.”  
  
The backs of Jared’s legs bump against the footrest of the viewing chair in the center of the room. “This okay?” Jensen asks again. Jared answers by sliding his hand all the way around the back of Jensen and pulling him down on top of him into the chair.  
  
Jensen slots himself over Jared’s pelvis and fits like he belongs there. The light through the dome highlights the tips of his golden-blonde spikes but leaves his face in shadow. Even so, Jared can see him smiling in the dark.  
  
  
********  
  
When Jared wakes in the morning feeling pleasantly exhausted and refreshed at the same time, Jensen is no longer beside him. He rummages around in the tangle of sleeping sheathes and discarded clothes to find his own things and pulls them on as he climbs out of the bunk.  
  
Although there are signs that Jensen has been in the commissary, he’s no longer there, so Jared grabs two caffeine tabs from the dispenser and heads to the lab. There, he finds Jensen talking on a personal commlink. Jensen reaches up behind him and pulls Jared’s chin down for a kiss without looking up. Then his fingers are back to flying over the data port screen, chaffing data into the feed.  
  
“He’s right here,” he says, and gestures for Jared to take the commlink from him.  
  
Jared hasn’t ever used a personal commlink before, and he’s unsure of where to aim his voice until Jensen pantomimes what to do.  
  
He clears his throat, rough and used up from the night before. “This is Dr. Padalecki,” he says, unsure of what to expect.  
  
“Dr. Felicia Day,” returns a perky voice immediately. Dr. Day… Dr. Day… he doesn’t recall any Dr. Day’s on _ISS Jupiter_. But the lack of delay precludes any other stations. He glances out the port at Jupiter. Yesterday the delay had been two seconds, and Europa was moving _away_ from the station, which totally doesn’t make sense. “Jensen tells me you’ve got quite the beautiful view from up there,” Dr. Day continues, interrupting his thoughts.  
  
Heat creeps up Jared’s neck, remembering how much he had enjoyed the view the night before. “Yes,” he says. He’s still wondering what this is all about.  
  
“So, Jensen and I worked together in Zurich for a little while, and I’m familiar with the protocols he’s proposing. I’ve been over the numbers, and it looks sound to me.”  
  
“Yes, the data certainly supports his—“  
  
“He tells me you’re pretty nervous about the plan?”  
  
“I’m just not sure we’ve taken into account all the contingencies.” Jared is having a hard time remembering all the objections he had to Jensen’s plan yesterday. For one thing, his caffeine tabs haven’t kicked in yet and for another, looking back to yesterday all he can think of is how hot Jensen was around his cock and how when he came he saw stars _inside_ the station.  
  
“Well, listen, I know he’s probably giving you a lot of talk about ‘leaps of faith’ and ‘believing in miracles’ but that’s just a smokescreen to cover up the fact that he’s a lot smarter than most of us and his mind works six times as fast. He’s probably an alien. If Jensen says it’s going to work, you can trust it, guaranteed. He’s saved earth more times than Earthcorp cares to admit, and there is no way in hell I would ever dare to still be down here if I didn’t know that Jensen has our back. If Mars had only—“  
  
“Wait. Did you just say—“  
  
“Umm… okay! I guess that’s everything I wanted to say! Don’t break Jensen’s heart and try and get him to forget about Gliese-C, okay? Okay, bye.”  
  
Jared’s still holding the commlink to his ear, trying to make sense of what he heard. Jensen is studiously _not_ making eye contact with him. “Jensen, did she say she’s on _Earth_?” He moves the commlink down in front of him, looking at it curiously.  
  
Jensen does that same back-of-the-neck-hair-stroking thing he did yesterday when Jared had asked him about the post-flight ops. “Yeah, about that…” he says.  
  
“Jensen. How? What did—“ Jared can’t even begin to form a proper question here. The communication delay to Earth is between thirty-five minutes and an hour, depending on the orbital positions of both planets. The conversation he had with Dr. Day is literally impossible. Impossible. “Where did you get this?” he asks at last.  
  
Jensen snatches it out of Jared’s hands, mock affront plastered over the quirky smile that he’s attempting to disguise. “I didn’t get it anywhere,” he says. “I made it. And let’s add that to the list of things I’d rather you didn’t mention to ASA, or Earthcorp, or anyone really. Now look at—“  
  
Jensen is trying to distract him with one of the reports on the screen. Like hell it’s going to work. “Jensen! Do you have any idea—“  
  
Suddenly, Jensen is deadly serious. “Yeah. I just told you I _made_ an ansible. I have a pretty damn good idea. You want Earthcorps all up in your business? You want Terracorps breathing down your neck 24/7? Well, neither do I. I’m not obligated to—“  
  
Jared reaches out and strokes his fingers down the side of Jensen’s neck, something he discovered last night that Jensen _really_ likes. “Hey,” he says softly as Jensen leans into the touch. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just. Wow. You can’t expect me not to react to this. You _made_ this? What? Mini-wormhole? God particle? What’s in there?”  
  
“None of the above,” Jensen answers. “It’s sort of an anti-matter/matter pairing particle I discovered when I was doing dry-runs at the Callisto lab. I’d rather not think about how it works; gives me a headache.”  
  
Jared sits down heavily in the chair next to Jensen. The device he just held in his hands changes _everything_. Questions tumble over each other in his brain faster than he can find words for them. Jensen quietly hums while he pulls his thoughts together. “Who knows?” Jared comes up with at last. Because it occurs to him that Jensen’s let him in on something huge, and that’s a heap of trust he laid at Jared’s feet.  
  
Jensen shrugs. “Felicia. My mom. Now you. And Commander Beaver suspects, but that’s a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of situation there. I’ll let him in on it when I’m too far out to make it worth his while to come and kick my ass.”  
  
“You’re really going, then,” Jared says, his heart sinking.  
  
Jensen gestures out the porthole. “My Gliese mission is your Europa. We’ve all got to pin our hopes on something.”  
  
“It’s _suicide_ ,” Jared whispers, his throat surprisingly tight. “I’m looking at you, and I literally cannot envision you entombed in a sleeper unit for years on end. What a _waste_.”  
  
“That’s only if you’re looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. From _my_ perspective, I’ll lay down to sleep and wake up, same as I do now. What does it matter if my ‘night’ is eight hours or six years?”  
  
“It matters because there’s a good chance you _won’t_ wake up, and there’s no rescue missions for Gliese-C. By the time anyone gets the hint that something has gone wrong, it will be too late.”  
  
“The mortality rate for humans is ten out of every ten. No one’s getting out of this life alive. Now, look. Your birds?”  
  
Jared sits down on the edge of the command panel in front of Jensen. ‘Yeah, of course,” he says. “Let’s do it.” If Jensen’s smart enough to have built an ansible in his spare time, he’s probably got a pretty good handle on how his protocols will work on the birds.  
  
Jensen reaches around Jared to tap a few keys, activating the systems he’d already put in place. “Should be ready for deployment in a couple of hours,” he says. “Let’s look over the maps again, optimize our scatter, okay?”  
  
“When do you leave?” Jared asks. He closes his eyes as Jensen slides his hand down his thigh.  
  
It’s a sign that he’s getting to know Jensen better; he can tell by the way Jensen shrugs doesn’t answer that Jensen knows _exactly_ how long until he leaves. Probably has a countdown running in his head, down to the minute. Okay. Then better help him make the most of it.  
  
++++++++  
  
Three days. It takes Jensen three days to do what Jared had estimated would need at least ten. Of course, they won’t know the outcome for at least two or three weeks, but Jensen’s done everything he came out to Europa to do.  
  
When Jared wakes up on the fourth morning something is… off-kilter. Something’s out of place, but he can’t quite put his finger on it immediately. Until he tries to sit up and the fluid, slow-motion quality of his movements clue him in. Something must be wrong with the paragravity generator because he feels about fifty pounds lighter than normal. Not floating, just… float- _y_.  
  
“I’m on it,” Jensen’s voice comes over the intercom. And something else. Music?  
  
Caffetabs first. Then Jensen. That seems to be the plan that works.  
  
When he reaches the maintenance pod, Jared finds Jensen in a pair of vintage pants—they used to be called blue jeans—and a tee-shirt splattered with what Jared guesses might be paint, even though they don’t make paint anymore. There’s music playing, something Jared recognizes for once: _I Want To Be Sedated_ , by… some band. Hey, at least he recognizes the song, ancient as it is.  
  
Half the panels are open with their wire guts spilling out haphazardly, while Jensen suctions the interiors with a vacuum tube. When he looks up and sees Jared watching him, he plucks a thin metal tab out of a slot in the wall, and the music stops abruptly.  
  
“A little grit on the circuits,” he says, gesturing to the panels. “Once it’s cleaned up I’ll run a diagnostics on the mags. Probably need to replace one or two of them. In the meantime…” A delicious grin spreads across Jensen’s face and he raises both arms over his head and before Jared can even process what’s happening, executes a flip, head over heels in the tight space, and lands directly in front of Jared.  
  
“Tah Dah!”  
  
Jared stares at him, trying desperately to fit Jensen into someplace that makes sense in the world. Here, in this lonely outpost? Sailing off to Gliese, silent and still in a sleeper unit? Choking on Earth’s poison air? No. No. And no again.  
  
“What?” Jensen says.  
  
“Just, you.” Jared answers. “You’re… happy.”  
  
Jensen grabs a set of parallel guide bars behind Jared’s head and pulls himself up tight against Jared. “Yeah,” he says, voice low and husky. “This moment. What’s there not to be happy about?” he asks. “Doesn’t this feel good?”  
  
It does. Jared likes the way his body responds overeagerly to the reduced gravity, likes the way Jensen’s fingers drift over the surface of his skin, light, and skimming. He thinks he could be happy if he could only keep Jensen for himself long enough.  
  
Jensen works on unbuttoning the front of Jared’s suit and pushes it off Jared’s shoulders, where it hangs loosely around his hips. “And this?” Jensen asks. He bobs his head and gently takes Jared’s nipple into his warm and teasing mouth. When he pulls back, the cold air of the maintenance pod leaves it chill and shivery.  
  
Jared guides Jensen’s mouth to all the places he needs them, which, it turns out, is everywhere. He _needs_ Jensen and his unmerited happiness and all of his foolish hopes and dreams. He grabs onto Jensen’s hips and slides his hands around down back and into Jensen’s jeans, gripping and pulling him so close that Jensen has no room to move his hand between them. He opens his mouth wide to let Jensen in, and Jensen gives, steady and sure against Jared’s frantic desperation.  
  
When Jensen pulls away for a moment to unfasten his fly, Jared’s head falls, slow-motion back up against the wall. Eyes closed, he shimmies his suit and boxers off, kicks them in a lazy arc towards the other side of the pod.  
  
It’s easier than it should be to put his arms around Jensen and lift him, spin him around so his back is against the wall. He runs his palm down Jensen’s arm, takes his wrist, and guides it up. “Hold on to these, okay?” he says, and Jensen obediently grips the bars over his head.  
  
The skin on Jensen’s flanks is so warm, so alive, as Jared slides his palms up under his tee-shirt and then down into his jeans, pushing them down and off. He wants to pin Jensen down, keep him here, bind them together. He kisses his face over and over, bites gently on his jaw and neck, less gently and more fervent on his shoulder.  
  
Jensen cants his hips forward, rubbing his erect cock into the cut of Jared’s hip, paints a slick and shiny trail onto his skin. Jared realizes with some surprise that Jensen needs him just as badly.  
  
Jensen’s still slick and easy from the night before, so Jared slides right into him when he hoists him up, hands around the back of Jensen’s thighs. He closes his eyes a moment and puts his head down on Jensen’s shoulder, trying to shut out everything else but this. Just the two of them, Jensen’s heat and life pulsing into him, keeping out the dark and cold and the helplessness. Jensen lets go of the bar with one hand and runs it up Jared’s back to rest at the base of his neck and whispers into Jared’s ear, “I’m not gone yet.”  
  
Jared holds tight and thrusts up into Jensen, trying to give him something back. The reduced g’s exaggerate all his efforts, and Jensen inches higher up the wall with every stroke. Jared thinks, _stay, stay with me_.  
  
His blood races through his veins, every nerve ending disorganized and frenetic. He might fly apart if Jensen lets him go. “I got you, I got you,” Jensen keeps whispering to the space behind his ear.  
  
Jensen’s cock is slick against Jared’s skin, and Jared worms a hand between them to stroke it, tries to make Jensen feel what he’s feeling. He turns his mouth back to Jensen’s lips, pushes them open. He wants to pull promises out of Jensen that he has no right to ask, no hope of getting. Jensen comes between their bodies with a guttural cry, and the burst of wet heat on Jared’s skin shocks him over the edge. He pours himself into Jensen, grinding them as tightly together as he can, fingers digging trenches into Jensen’s thighs.  
  
“I can’t stay,” Jensen says after a few moments of silent room and slowing heartbeats. As if he heard what Jared was thinking. He kisses Jared’s hair, his cheek, his lips, repeating his words, and it sounds for all the world like he’s trying to convince himself.  
  
++++++++  
  
“Jensen, what exactly is your role on the Gliese-C mission?” Jared asks one night about a week later. Jensen had given him his own personal commlink before he left. It looks suspiciously like it’s put together using parts cannibalized from the maintenance pod. Jensen’s voice is rich and full and warm and right in his ear. Jared can close his eyes, and save for the chill air that surrounds him, Jensen could be standing right there rather than drifting farther and farther away with each passing day.  
  
“Mechanical Engineering,” Jensen answers.  
  
Jared was starting to expect as much. Every time they talk, Jensen’s on some job that involves his hands more than his mind. He’s used to the way Jensen’s voice sounds when he’s got a pair of pliers clenched between his teeth, and the gruff breaths he makes when he’s tightening bolts.  
  
“Who’s on the terraforming team?” he asks and waits to hear what he expects—an evasion.  
  
“Oh, you know, everyone’s multi-tasking. Hey. Did you get your new mags yet?”  
  
“Yeah, I got them. Feels like I’m walking around through molasses now. But Jensen—“  
  
“On the bright side, no more cleaning your jizz off the ceiling, right?”  
  
“I totally blame you for that. But don’t pull this on me, Jensen. Tell me the truth… what’s the deal with the terraforming on Gliese-C?”  
  
Over the ansible, it’s like Jensen’s huffed-out breath could actually brush Jared’s neck across the miles. The ghostly sound of it prickles his skin. “You know how it is,” Jensen says. “There’s not enough space for people who can’t do more than one job. I’ll probably switch over to some of the simulations work when we get closer, and Dr. Dinwiddie is cramming in all the zoology she can before we leave. There’s a lot of evidence that there’s already a breathable atmosph—“  
  
“You guys don’t have a plan, do you?” Jared interrupts angrily. “What’s your damn hurry?” He paces the floor underneath the observation dome. Scorpius, the constellation that includes the Gliese star system, glitters distantly.  
  
“The sooner we get started, the sooner we get there,” Jensen says. Jared’s seriously sick of hearing that catchphrase. This isn’t the first time they’ve had this discussion. “Besides, we’ll have plenty of time to—“  
  
“Bullshit.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Jensen says. The clanking, hammering noise Jared can hear in the background ceases.  
  
“Robert got me access to the roster. Not one of you has terraforming experience or training. You’re banking on stuff that you can only guess at and hope for. The total waking hours per crew member is less than four years accumulated time during the trip. It took Terracorps _thirty-six years_ to find a predictive model that worked for Europa, and that was _with_ on-the-ground data.”  
  
“Jared, if you want to come, why don’t you just ask?”  
  
Jared stops pacing and lets himself fall back into the chair. “No,” he whispers, his breath leaving him. “You know I can’t.”  
  
“You _won’t_.”  
  
“I can’t give up hope here.” Above him, the sun rises over the eastern horizon of Europa, sending flares of brilliant white light shooting over curving edge.  
  
“You need to have faith in what you’ve done. If you’ve lost hope that it could go on without you, then _you_ don’t believe in Europa, because you’re not going to be around forever.” Jensen is back to working, there’s a sound like welding sparks coming through with his words.  
  
“Nice talk from someone who’s abandoning ship.”  
  
“Hey,” Jensen says. “Just because I believe in this way doesn’t mean I think _your_ way is going to fail. Maybe I have hope enough for both of us. There’s something to be said for redundancy here.” Jared hears the clicks and snaps of a panel being locked up. “Is this how you want to spend our time together?”  
  
Jared closes his eyes. Ever since he’d gotten the roster and the launch schedule from Commander Beaver, he’d had the time ticking down in his head, his heart beating each moment painfully away until there was no turning back for Jensen. “No,” he breathes out. “No. I don’t want to fight.”  
  
“Good. I’ll call you back when I’m off duty tonight.”  
  
++++++++  
  
“How are the birds?” Jensen has two weeks left before launch, and the closer it gets, the more his voice takes on this excited, edgy quality. Even when he knows better, Jared still pictures him in the blue jeans and tee-shirt he wore on their last day together, bouncing around to the Ramones (Jared looked it up.)  
  
Right now, for example, Jared happens to know that he woke Jensen from sleep only moments ago, something that almost never happens, because he seriously thinks Jensen might be some sort of alien after all; he never sleeps. But he _sounds_ instantly wide awake.  
  
“From what I can see on satellite, looks great,” Jared answers. “Going to go check on them in a couple of days. Were you really sleeping?”  
  
Their connection is so clear, Jared can hear the rasp of Jensen’s stubble, hear Jensen rubbing the sleep off his face. “Yeah, it had been a couple of days. I was starting to see things and figured I’d better get some sleep before I got sent to Psych.”  
  
“I’d like to see you like that, sleepy. I can’t imagine it.” He thinks for a moment about all the things he wants, all the things he can’t imagine, but pushes those thoughts aside. “Actually, I’d like to fuck you like that. All slow and sleepy, take my time and help you tune out everything.”  
  
“Hey, come along for the ride with me and you’ll have plenty of opportunities,” Jensen says. Then he adds, “You can still come. There’s still time.”  
  
“You could still stay,” Jared answers, as he always does.  
  
“You were saying something about fucking me?” Jensen says, changing the subject as usual. “I actually think your best bet in this situation would be a nice, slow hand job. Like you’ve got all the time in the world.”  
  
“That’s what you’re looking for? For me to stroke you off, all lazy and half asleep before I’m even done?” Jared has his own hand palming his crotch. It responds to the liquid sex quality of Jensen’s voice, to the sound of his breath coming faster over the ansible. Closing his eyes, he can conjure the image of Jensen standing in front of him, thinks about it being Jensen’s cock in his hand.  
  
“No, I meant you. I meant I want you to get yourself off, I’d want to watch.” There’s a pause. “Or, at the very least, hear about it.”  
  
Jared sits down hard in the observation chair. He pictures Jensen’s eyes, fever-bright and heavy with lust, watching him. He can’t get the tie on his sleep scrubs untied fast enough.  
  
Jensen continues. “Yeah, because all the times you had your hands on me, those long fingers, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d look like wrapped around your own cock.”  
  
“You should have asked, I would have shown you,” Jared whispers. He’s painfully aware of the tense their conversations have taken, their time referred to in past should-haves and would-haves. Jensen _could have_ asked him for anything, he _would have_ done it.  
  
“I was also thinking that your hands are big enough to hold it and slip a finger down to touch yourself too. Is that how you do it Jared?” Jensen isn’t making this up to titillate, he’s genuinely curious.  
  
The words stumble and get stuck on the way out. “N... no. That’s not… No, I’ve never done that.”  
  
“You do now.”  
  
Jensen’s breath sounds faster; Jared on the other hand, cannot breathe at all.  
  
“Come on, Padalecki, I’m not going to believe you’re doing it until I can hear you suck your finger wet first.”  
  
Jared has no doubt that Jensen can hear it, the slight wet sucking noise his tongue makes on his finger, the shifting sound of his tee-shirt as he lowers his hand back down. He doesn’t dare touch his dick though, because it’s too sensitive, too close. Instead, he tentatively touches his rim.  
  
“Yeah, see? See what you’ve been missing?” Jensen croons when Jared groans. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what to do. You’ve done it to me, it’s no different.”  
  
Jared holds on to his cock and balls with his thumb and forefinger, fans the rest of his fingers out so the pinky can reach further, push in a little.  
  
“Feel how tight that is? Never done it before, huh?” Jensen doesn’t need him to answer, the way Jared’s breath comes out in short moans is answer enough. The feeling is so intense, and all he can think is, _this is what I did to Jensen… this is how it felt for him_ , and it turns him inside out.  
  
“Don’t forget about your dick. You’ve got two hands, you know.”  
  
He risks a slow, skittering stroke over the taut skin of his cock with the fingertips of his opposite hand, and at the same time, pushes his finger further in, feeling the tight ring of muscle ease up enough to let it pass. In his ear, he can hear a rhythmic rustling sound. “Are you—“ he starts to ask.  
  
“Right there with you,” Jensen answers.  
  
The sound of Jensen’s voice, rough and breathless makes Jared abandon the cautious, tentative stroking. There was no way he was going to make this “as long as possible” as he had planned. He grabs his cock firmly and gives it a good, satisfying squeeze, and with the other hand, shoves his finger as far up as it will go. A groan he’d been holding in rips from his lips.  
  
He swears there’s another heartbeat right over his. An echo, a twin. As if his body itself is an ansible that can feel Jensen across the miles as if there’s no distance between them at all. The rushing blood, the sparking nerves, the heated sounds of lust, they’re all mixed together like it doesn’t matter who’s touching who, themselves or each other. When he comes, arching up off his chair, muscles locked and teeth clenched, Jared has this moment where he actually _forgets that he’s himself_ , and gets that same triumphant feeling as he does when he makes Jensen come.  
  
Maybe the growl of pleasure Jensen makes in his ear has something to do with it.  
  
++++++++  
  
Jared stands at the glass, considering Europa above him. He remembers his mamma, coughing through her last days. When it all comes down to it, he did this for her. This substation was built to support a team of fifty, and yet, for the past six years, he’s been the only one here, the only one who still realistically thinks it could work.  
  
What do you risk when the stakes are so high? What do you sacrifice when there’s so little hope?  
  
He’s made up his mind. He gets Jensen on the commlink. “I want you to come out here one last time before you leave,” he says.  
  
If you love something, set it free.  
  
********  
  
Human beings really do create some of the most amazing things, Jared thinks during the descent. He’s aware of the way Jensen’s weight makes the cable sway a little more perilously than he’s used to, aware of the sound of Jensen’s breath in his earpiece, aware that this may be the last time they experience this. The combination of wonder and the ache of loss closes up his throat, makes each beat of his heart a painful squeeze.  
  
When they enter the atmosphere proper, Jensen tilts back his helmet. “I can’t believe you’re finally letting me down here,” he says. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt dirt under my feet?”  
  
“Do you have any idea how long it’s going to be before you get to feel it again? Maybe never.” The ache grows in Jared’s heart. “I wanted to say goodbye the right way,” he says. “Looking at something beautiful.”  
  
Jensen is uncharacteristically solemn, his eyes scanning the patch of land far below their feet. “You see them?” he asks.  
  
“Not yet,” Jared answers. “But it’s a huge flock; it will be hard to miss. See that tributary?” He points to a steel-black line snaking across the ground below them. “Probably where that meets the entrance to that canyon over there.”  
  
Nodding his head, Jensen pulls off his gloves and tucks them in the pouch at his hip, unzips his suit. It’s not safe to take them off yet, the fall is still too far, but it won’t be long. He puts his hand on Jared’s back, but can’t quite seem to find the right place to touch, he keeps shifting around and pulling back, at last dropping his hand at his side. “I’m glad this worked,” he says. “That we got to do this together. It’s important. It’s not that I didn’t _think_ that before,” he amends quickly when Jared shoots him a _no shit_ look. “It’s just that now I can _see_ it.”  
  
They watch in silence for the rest of the descent.  
  
When the platform hits the ground, Jensen pauses for a moment, eyes closed. Jared watches him breathing deep the first lung-fulls of natural air that he’s had in years. “Come on,” he urges softly. “There’s more to see.” They unfasten their suits without speaking. Jensen’s hands are trembling and he fumbles the buckles.  
  
When Jensen steps off the platform and his boot hits the ground, he stops and bends down, scoops up a handful of loose rocks and dirt, and lets it fall through his fingers. “Careful, Ackles,” Jared says. “You’re disrupting biofilms and setting back the progression timetable for that patch of dirt who knows how far.” Strangely, the more he sees how Jensen is affected by what he’s leaving behind, the more confident he is that he’s made the right decision, and every moment that passes by his chest eases a little.  
  
“This way,” he motions after giving Jensen a moment with his dirt.  
  
He can hear the flock on the other side of an outcropping of windswept rock. They hadn’t seen the dunn-colored birds from the descension platform; their bodies blended perfectly with the rocks and boulders in which they nested, but their cooing and squawking carries far on the morning air. Jared reaches the rise a few steps ahead of Jensen, who is craning his neck trying to look in every direction at once.  
  
As they crest the hill, the whole flock takes flight in unison, their wings a deafening cacophony of sound echoing off the canyon walls around them. Soaring first into the wind, then banking against it, they whip around in unison, an undulating wave of life rippling over the landscape. Jensen’s gasp of wonder is barely audible above the noise, but Jared hears it close in his ear, feels it in his heart. He reaches back and takes Jensen’s hand.  
  
He pulls Jensen in front of him, back to chest, and they stand on the hill until the murmuration passes.  
  
“You did this,” Jensen murmurs when it’s quiet again. He gestures out towards the greening hills to the west. “You _made_ this. Incredible.”  
  
Jared nestles his nose in the baby-soft hair behind Jensen’s ear. “I can do it again,” he whispers. “Somewhere else.”  
  
Jensen jerks away and turns around to face Jared. “What did you just say?” he asks, his face twisting between hope and disbelief. “Did you—“  
  
“Yes,” Jared answers, placing his hand on Jensen’s jaw, gently pulling him back closer so he can kiss his mouth into a smile.  
  



End file.
